front cover of Ecologists and Environmental Politics
Ecologists and Environmental Politics
A History of Contemporary Ecology
Stephen Bocking
West Virginia University Press, 2017
Ecologists, like other scientists, have for decades debated their role in society. While some have argued that ecologists should participate in environmental politics, others have focused their attention strictly on scientific issues. In Ecologists and Environmental Politics, now updated with a new preface by the author, Stephen Bocking explores this debate by recounting the history of ecology in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada since the 1940s.
Bocking tells this history through four case studies: the origins and early research of the Nature Conservancy in Great Britain; the development of ecology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; the work of the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study in New Hampshire; and research in fisheries ecology at the University of Toronto. By comparing these case studies, Bocking demonstrates how the places of contemporary science—laboratories, landscapes, and funding agencies—and science’s purposes, as expressed through the political roles of expertise and specific managerial and regulatory responsibilities, have shaped contemporary ecology and its application to pressing environmental problems.
 
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Ecospeak
Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America
M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer
Southern Illinois University Press, 1992

In this book, M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer have a twofold purpose: to analyze the patterns of rhetoric used in written discourse about environmental politics and to make a practical contribution to the art of rhetorical criticism through the study of rhetoric in use.

The language, professional objectivity, and research programs of scientists insulate these best-informed citizens in enclaves of specialization, limiting access to crucial information and hindering effective reformative action. Science, the authors stress, is not merely a database to rely upon but a view of the world that must be broadened in order to affect social morality. Science-based activism must arise to ensure the care and future of the environment.

Killingsworth and Palmer argue that for grassroots activism to be tied to this globally conscious philosophy, a rhetoric of sustainability must be cultivated.

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Environmental Politics and Policy in the West, Revised Edition
Zachary A. Smith
University Press of Colorado, 2007
Population growth and industrial development have put the wide-open spaces and natural resources that define the West under immense stress. Vested interests clash and come to terms over embattled resources such as water, minerals, and even open space. The federal government controls 40 to 80 percent of the land base in many western states; its sway over the futures of the West's communities and environment has prompted the development of unique policies and politics in the West.

Zachary A. Smith and John Freemuth bring together a roster of top scholars to explicate the issues noted above as well as other key questions in this new edition of Environmental Politics and Policy in the West, which was first published in 1993. This thoroughly revised and updated edition offers a comprehensive and current survey.

Contributors address the policy process as it affects western states, how bureaucracy and politics shape environmental dialogues in the West, how western states innovate environmental policies independently of Washington, and how and when science is involved (or ignored) in management of the West's federal lands. Experts in individual resource areas explore multifaceted issues such as the politics of dam removal and restoration, wildlife resource concerns, suburban sprawl and smart growth, the management of hard-rock mining, and the allocation of the West's tightly limited water resources. Contributors include: Leslie R. Alm, Carolyn D. Baber, Walter F. Baber, Robert V. Bartlett, Hugh Bartling, Matthew A. Cahn, R. McGreggor Cawley, Charles Davis, Sandra Davis, John C. Freemuth, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Matt Lindstrom, William R. Mangun, Denise McCain-Tharnstrom, Daniel McCool, Jaina L. Moan, and Zachary A. Smith.

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front cover of Environmental Politics and Policy in the West, Third Edition
Environmental Politics and Policy in the West, Third Edition
Zachary A. Smith
University Press of Colorado, 2016
Population growth, industrial development, and renewed resource extraction have put the wide-open spaces and natural resources that define the West under immense stress. Vested interests clash and come to terms over embattled resources such as water, minerals, and even open space. The federal government controls 40 to 80 percent of the land base in many western states, so its sway over the future of the West’s communities and environments has prompted the development of unique policies and politics. 

In the third edition of Environmental Politics and Policy in the West, Zachary A. Smith and John Freemuth bring together a roster of top scholars to explicate the key issues involved. The volume has been completely updated to cover rapidly changing developments in the West, including climate change, land management politics and policy, science controversies, western water and river restoration, tribal sovereignty issues, the management of endangered species, and renewable energy development. Contributors also address how bureaucracy and politics shape environmental dialogues and explore multifaceted issues such as the politics of dam removal and restoration, wildlife resource concerns, suburban sprawl and smart growth, the management of renewable resources, public land reform and science, tribal sovereignty and energy, and the allocation of the West’s tightly limited water resources.

This timely new edition offers a comprehensive and current survey of influential western policy and environmental issues. It will be of great use to students of environmental studies and also public and environmental policy, as well as activists and professionals working in the environmental arena.

Contributors: Leslie R. Alm, Esther Babcock, Hugh Bartling, Matthew A. Cahn, Charles Davis, Sandra Davis, Megan M. DeMasters, Duran Fiack, Robert E. Forbis Jr., John Freemuth, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Matt Lindstrom, Jean C. Mangun, William R. Mangun, Denise McCain-Tharnstrom, Daniel McCool, Zachary A. Smith
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The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands
Erika Allen Wolters
Oregon State University Press, 2020
The management of public lands in the West is a matter of long-standing and oft-contentious debates. The government must balance the interests of a variety of stakeholders, including extractive industries like oil and timber; farmers, ranchers, and fishers; Native Americans; tourists; and environmentalists. Local, state, and government policies and approaches change according to the vagaries of scientific knowledge, the American and global economies, and political administrations. Occasionally, debates over public land usage erupt into major incidents, as with the armed occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016.

While a number of scholars work on the politics and policy of public land management, there has been no central book on the topic since the publication of Charles Davis's Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Westview, 2001). In The Environmental Politics and Policy of Western Public Lands, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have assembled a stellar cast of scholars to consider long-standing issues and topics such as endangered species, land use, and water management while addressing more recent challenges to western public lands like renewable energy siting, fracking, Native American sovereignty, and land use rebellions. Chapters also address the impact of climate change on policy dimensions and scope.
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Environmental Politics and Policy
Theories and Evidence
James P. Lester, ed.
Duke University Press, 1995
Completely revised throughout, and including five new chapters, this second edition of Environmental Politics and Policy provides an updated review and synthesis of the political science literature on the subject of environmental politics and policy. Various chapters by leading scholars in the field analyze and describe the role of public opinion, interest groups, political parties, Congress, the Executive Branch, the Courts, and elites as they have influenced the formation of U.S. environmental policies over the past twenty-five years. The book also provides ideas for future research and will stimulate thinking about the subject in the 1990s and beyond.

From reviews of the First Edition:
"All the authors in this collection of essays are well known in the field of environmental policy. Their breadth of knowledge, and diversity of perspectives, permit a rich and comprehensive coverage of the scholarly work in this field."—Daniel McCool, Journal of Politics

"An excellent collection of readings with a strong emphasis on institutional analysis as an approach to environmental policy in the United States."—Robert Paehlke, Natural Resources and Environmental Administration

"No better review of the political science of environmental policy-making has yet been published."—Christopher J. Bailey, Environmental Politics

Contributors. David Colnic, Douglas Costain, John S. Dryzek, Riley E. Dunlap, Helen M. Ingram, Sheldon Kamieniecki, Michael E. Kraft, James P. Lester, Dean E. Mann, Evan J. Ringquist, Walter A. Rosenbaum, Mark E. Rushefsky, Gerald B. Thomas, Lettie M. Wenner

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front cover of Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream
Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream
Establishing the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
Harold C. Jordahl
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is a breathtakingly beautiful archipelago of twenty-two islands in Lake Superior, just off the tip of northern Wisconsin. For years, the national park has been a favorite destination for tourists and locals alike, but the remarkable story behind its creation is little known. In Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream, Harold Jordahl, one of the primary advocates for designating the islands as a national park, discloses the full story behind the effort to preserve their natural beauty for posterity. He describes in detail the political and bureaucratic complexities of the national lakeshore campaign, augmented by his own personal recollections and those of such prominent figures as Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and President John F. Kennedy. Writing in collaboration with Annie Booth, Jordahl recounts how activists, legislators, media, local residents, and other players shaped the islands’ future establishment as a national park.

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Exposed
Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times
Stacy Alaimo
University of Minnesota Press, 2016

Opening with the statement “The anthropocene is no time to set things straight,” Stacy Alaimo puts forth potent arguments for a material feminist posthumanism in the chapters that follow.

From trans-species art and queer animals to naked protesting and scientific accounts of fishy humans, Exposed argues for feminist posthumanism immersed in strange agencies and scale-shifting ethics. Including such divergent topics as landscape art, ocean ecologies, and plastic activism, Alaimo explores our environmental predicaments to better understand feminist occupations of transcorporeal subjectivity.

She puts scientists, activists, artists, writers, and theorists in conversation, revealing that the state of the planet in the twenty-first century has radically transformed ethics, politics, and what it means to be human. Ultimately, Exposed calls for an environmental stance in which, rather than operating from an externalized perspective, we think, feel, and act as the very stuff of the world.

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Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty
Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers
Michelle Murphy
Duke University Press, 2006
Before 1980, sick building syndrome did not exist. By the 1990s, it was among the most commonly investigated occupational health problems in the United States. Afflicted by headaches, rashes, and immune system disorders, office workers—mostly women—protested that their workplaces were filled with toxic hazards; yet federal investigators could detect no chemical cause. This richly detailed history tells the story of how sick building syndrome came into being: how indoor exposures to chemicals wafting from synthetic carpet, ink, adhesive, solvents, and so on became something that relatively privileged Americans worried over, felt, and ultimately sought to do something about. As Michelle Murphy shows, sick building syndrome provides a window into how environmental politics moved indoors.

Sick building syndrome embodied a politics of uncertainty that continues to characterize contemporary American environmental debates. Michelle Murphy explores the production of uncertainty by juxtaposing multiple histories, each of which explains how an expert or lay tradition made chemical exposures perceptible or imperceptible, existent or nonexistent. She shows how uncertainty emerged from a complex confluence of feminist activism, office worker protests, ventilation engineering, toxicology, popular epidemiology, corporate science, and ecology. In an illuminating case study, she reflects on EPA scientists’ efforts to have their headquarters recognized as a sick building. Murphy brings all of these histories together in what is not only a thorough account of an environmental health problem but also a much deeper exploration of the relationship between history, materiality, and uncertainty.

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Unnatural Resources
Energy and Environmental Politics in Appalachia after the 1973 Oil Embargo
Michael Camp
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019

Unnatural Resources explores the intersection of energy production and environmental regulation in Appalachia after the oil embargo of 1973. The years from 1969 to 1973 saw the passage of a number of laws meant to protect the environment from human destruction, and they initially enjoyed broad public popularity. However, the oil embargo, which caused lines and fistfights at gasoline stations, refocused Americans’ attention on economic issues and alerted Americans to the dangers of relying on imported oil. As a drive to increase domestic production of energy gained momentum, it soon appeared that new environmental regulations were inhibiting this initiative. A backlash against environmental regulations helped inaugurate a bipartisan era of market-based thinking in American politics and discredited the idea that the federal government had a constructive role to play in addressing energy issues. This study connects political, labor, and environmental history to contribute to a growing body of literature on the decline of the New Deal and the rise of pro-market thinking in American politics. 

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